3 4

Keep it Simple, Make it Fast!

An approach to underground music scenes (vol. 4)

Paula Guerra and Thiago Pereira Alberto (eds.)

First Published July 2019 by Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Letras [University of Porto. Faculty of Arts and Humanities]

Via Panorâmica, s/n, 4150-564, Porto, PORTUGAL www.letras.up.pt

Design: Wasted Rita and Marcelo Baptista

Credits illustrations of book’s parts: Esgar Acelerado

ISBN 978-989-54179-1-9

All the content presented in texts are solely the responsibility of the authors. The ideas presented do not necessarily represent the opinion of the editors.

Attribution CC BY 4.0. International

This book is Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. International License (CC BY 4.0). It is allowed to share, redistribute, adapt, remix, transform and build upon the content of this book. The appropriate credit must be given to the authors and editors.

More informations: https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0 489

10.1 German punk feminist festivals’ politics and social space: between identity and anti-identity politics

Louise Barrière242

Abstract: Growing out of diverse influences, including for example the scene, intersectional and queer movements, punk-feminist festivals associate theory, activism and art, and act as platforms and forums for a multidisciplinary subcultural feminism. This article draws on the study of archives and on participant observation to analyze the ambivalent approach of gender that develops within the punk-feminist festivals network in Germany. I will more precisely demonstrate that, while it is true that there are specific connexions between punk-feminism, queer-feminism and anti-identity politics, it doesn’t necessarily mean that material feminist analyzes and identity politics have completely been forgotten by the new feminist movements of the 2000s. Keywords: Festivals, subculture, feminism, gender policy, identity.

242 University of Lorraine - Le 2L2S - Laboratoire Lorrain de Sciences Sociales. Nancy, France. E-mail: [email protected] 490

1. Introduction As I arrive on the Sunday morning at the Böse & Gemein festival’s networking brunch, that Helen recommended me to attend regarding the fact that I could meet people interested by my research there, and take the line to the food, someone –that I recognize as a member of the organizing team– approaches and gives me a pen and a roll of tape. The person speaks German very fast, maybe too fast for me who just woke up, but I can catch that they propose me to write my name and pronoun on the tape and stick it on my jacket. ‘It’s no mandatory’, they say, ‘Only if you want’. I look at their sweater, the tape says ‘Ulle - Sie*Er’. I take the tools and write ‘Louise – Sie’. Later in the morning, I notice Christina that I already met a few months ago in Berlin, she also has that tape sticked on. I will keep my tape on the whole day, announcing to everyone who would want to know, within the festival space, how to refer to me. (…) As we go back to Helen’s flat at night, after the gigs, it’s raining outside. Even though our way isn’t that long, the text on the tape is washed away the more we go back into the ‘real world’ and walk away of the festival space and its special norms (Field notes, 25th June 2018). Growing out of diverse influences, including for example intersectional feminism and queer movements –as that abstract of my field notes should indicate it– punk-feminist festivals associate theory, activism and art, and develop platforms and forums for a multidisciplinary subcultural feminism. They notably draw on the first Ladyfest that took place in Olympia, Washington (USA) in 2000, itself inspired by the Riot Grrrl Movement that was born at the same place a decade before and whose history has been chronicled by Marion Leonard (2007) or Sara Marcus (2010). No more than three years later, in 2003, three Ladyfests are held in Germany: in Berlin, the capital, Hamburg and Leipzig. At the end of 2018, around 97 punk-feminist festivals had been organized far and wide in the country; 74 of them named “Ladyfest”243. The others nonetheless are still drawing on the same model, with workshops on the daytime, and movie screenings, performances and most of all concerts and parties during the evenings and nights. The topics of the workshops and debates, the subjects of the movies, alongside with the lyrics sung or screamed by some bands on the stage all make gender issues the political guideline of these cultural events, which happen to be intermixed with et enhanced by discussions, analyzes and debates on topics as diverse as racism, ecology, veganism and animal liberation, etc. From now on, most of the academic studies around punk-feminism have 243 These numbers stem from my focused on fanzines (Rosenberg & Garofalo, 1998; Dunn & Farnsworth, 2015) own PhD studies. With the help of and people (Wald, 1998; Downes, 2012; Griffin, 2012; Sharp & Nilan, 2015), and it Ladyfest online database (http:// happened just recently that a few scholars showed interest in Ladyfests and ladyfest.org), the ladyfest wiki, the punk-feminist festivals (Zobl, 2005; O’Shea, 2014; Ommert, 2016). Most of these website Grassrootsfeminism (http:// works though connect punk-feminism with queer-feminism (for example: www.grassrootsfeminism.net), on- line social medias (Facebook, Twitter, Ommert, 2016). This article draws on the study of around 200 archives from the Instagram), fanzines and archives festivals (flyers, programs booklets, manifestos, websites, etc.) and on participant (found at the Youthculture Archives observation during five events (in Mannheim, Saarbrücken, Berlin, Dresden and – Archiv der Jugendkulturen in Karlsruhe) this year. It aims to rethink this association and demonstrate that Berlin), I have collected in a database while it is true that there are specific connection between punk-feminism and the names and main characteristics queer-feminism, it doesn’t mean that material feminist analyzes and identity (dates, place, programs, price of the entrance) of the punk-feminist or politics have completely been forgotten by the new feminist movements of the punk-inspired feminist festivals that 2000s. Then, how do these German punk-feminist festivals build their gender occurred in Germany since 2003. policy? How do they try to create spaces with their own social and gender rules, 491 10.1 German punk feminist festivals’ gender politics and social space: between identity and anti-identity politics

considering both gender identity politics based on a materialist understanding, and anti-identity politics influenced by queer theories? In the first part of this article, I will develop the difference and breaking points between materialist feminism -that grew in the 1970s- and queer feminism -of the 1990s. Following the definition of queer given by Kathy Rudy (2000), alongside with the works of Butler and Sedgwick, I will then analyze in a second part the strong development of a queer-feminist basis within punk- feminist festivals, drawing on their refusal of gender binary and their advocacy for sex positivity. Finally, in a third part I will consider the long-term influence of materialist feminism in contemporary punk-feminist movements. I will therefore first regard it in perspective with the concept of subcultural capital developed by Sarah Thornton (1995) and then look at the cultural transfers of women’s defense methods against abuses (See Guerra, 2015). The whole point of the article is to show that punk-feminist festivals aim to become counter- power territories, fighting against both gender and sexual binaries and the specific of women, within the punk scene and beyond.

2. The materialist feminism vs. queer feminism quarrel: Elements of feminism historical and generational context Feminism is often considered divided and covering different political beliefs: its different so-called “waves” are distinguishing generations of activists, each expected to embrace a different theory alongside with a different kind of activism. On the contrary, this presentation aims to show that punk feminist movements borrow elements to both the second wave and materialist feminism, as we call it in France especially, and to queer feminism (which is more likely to spread around the third wave). The terms and theories I employ in this article in their academic sense are not really used in punk- feminist festivals and networks. The activists of this scene never quote Judith Butler nor Christine Dephy, or Colette Guillaumin, et al. But in a certain way, they embrace their thoughts and use them on their own terms, avoiding most of the time the academic jargon. Thus, academic theories are adapted to a subcultural context. Their knowledge spreads in the scene, through zines or through events such as festivals, from activist to activist and is not necessarily linked to an academic context.

2.1. Materialist feminism: reading gender as a Before engaging in this article’s main case-study, it is important to define the principal concepts I will be using here. Materialist feminism is an expression that is mostly used in the French context and that first developed in the 1970s, around theorists such as , , Colette Guillaumin, Nicole Claude-Mathieu. It refers to a kind of feminism that considers gender as a system defining two classes, creating thus inequalities and opposing men who benefit from the system to women who don’t. Inside of this system men and women constitute two interrelated categories. One cannot exist without the other. These classes of gender are, of course, socially and economically constructed and do not come from “nature”, distinguishing thus materialist feminists from essentialist feminists. While striving against male dominance, 492

materialist feminist have to politically invest the “women” social category to demonstrate their mobilization as an oppressed group and fight for equality, which connects them with “identity politics”. Their final goal nonetheless is beyond identity politics, because they fight for a total abolishment of gender, as a structure that generates , and social, economic and physical oppression of women. Materialist theorists mostly criticize queer theorists for their lack of consideration for the concrete, economic and social gender hierarchy (Noyé, 2014).

2.2. Queer feminism: moving on from society to the self While materialist feminism can be perceived as a broadened form of “identity politics”, queer movements are more into “anti-identity politics”, and aim to blur frontiers between , between masculinity and , between hetero- and homosexuality. They grew in the 1990s, as American scholars such as Judith Butler got to read the French poststructuralists of the 1970s, such as Kristeva, Derrida and Foucault (Delphy, 1995). While materialist feminism focuses on society as a whole, post-structuralists and thus queer theorists rather focus concentrate on the self. They aim to study and deconstruct the structures of power at an individual scale. This paper mostly draws on Kathy Rudy’s (2000) definition of “queer”. According to her work “queer movements” are mainly characterized by four facts and thoughts. First, according to queer theorists, interpretation plays a big role in understanding the aspects of our lives. In fact, no events nor gesture are self-evident or self-interpreting. They are encoded by social norms and conventions. Following Butler’s theories (1990, 2004), our actions (behaviors, gestures, speeches) define our (individual or collective) identity, which is also to be constantly remodeled and redefined. Being queer is thus not about being gay but about challenging, resisting these norms. Then, gender and sexuality are also socially and historically constructed. Gender as much as sexual preferences or sexuality only exists because of a consensual idea of what “women” and “men” are or should be. It is therefore the same regarding homosexual and heterosexual categories. They are “produced” by social events, strategies and fantasies. We “code” ourselves as man or by performing things associated with our gender. Queer theory therefore leads to a strong critique of gender and sexual binary. Queer theorists compel us to deconstruct these binaries and to “look for places where this normality breaks down, where it is shown to be inadequate” (Rudy, 2000). Sedgwick (2003) therefore advocates for a “queer performativity” that has to define, deconstruct or break identity boundaries. Furthermore, queer activists engage in radical, aggressive and confrontational activism: contrary to the institutional gay and lesbian movement, queer is “anti-assimilationist”. And finally, queer is a sex positive movement. Plus, Rudy writes:

Moving beyond the male/female binary will free us from unnecessary gender discrimination currently present in many aspects of social life. We also need feminism, however, to help us consciously focus on and recover ‘women’s work’ as a central concern in the new queer discourse (Rudy, 2000, p. 214). 493 10.1 German punk feminist festivals’ gender politics and social space: between identity and anti-identity politics

The point of this article is to show that, following Rudy’s assertion, the German network of punk-feminist festivals aim to create spaces, connected to each other, that are “free from unnecessary gender discrimination”, and therefore go beyond the “male/female binary”. Nonetheless, they also claim being feminist and “focus on ‘women’s work’ as a central concern”, meaning that they have to draw on older analyzes and methodologies of feminist movements and to build their thoughts on , identity politics and the so-called “second wave of feminism” (a term that I will be discussing in the conclusion of this article).

3. ‘Ein Raum schaffen’244: Punk-feminist festivals and the construction of their anti-identity social space Festivals are enclaves in the everyday life. They build immersive strategies in order to cut themselves from the regular social norms and define their own. Bennett and Peterson (2004) described festivals as “large multiday events that periodically bring together scene devotees from far and wide in one place, where they can enjoy their kind of music and briefly live the lifestyle associated with it with little concern for the expectations of others”. The lifestyle associated with punk-feminist culture takes of course music into its concerns but also gender politics. German punk feminist collectives often say or write that they want to “build a space” – not physically but rather socially, and the point of this part of my article is to show how this is to be done.

3.1. Beyond the gender binary Punk feminist spaces, such as festivals, thus, develop their own codes, norms, rules and identities. Following the queer dynamics toward the deconstruction of gender binary, people even invent or reclaim neutral pronouns. In German, people sometimes use “sie*er” which is a mix between the feminine pronoun (sie) and the masculine one (er). The small star refers to some kind of “continuity” between masculinity and femininity, pointing that they are not strictly opposed to each other and that people can identify and reclaim identities that are in between or beyond. Alongside comes an important rule in these spaces: never assume you know what pronouns someone wants to use unless you have asked before. In fact, organizers and audiences develop strategies such as (during workshops) names and pronouns rounds (where the attendees are expected to introduce themselves with the name and pronoun of their choice), or name and pronouns labels or pins (the attendees stick on their clothes a label that mention the name and pronoun they want the others to use to designate them). These rules of course don’t exist in everyday life public spaces because, queer theorists say, people are constantly assigned a gender regarding what they are performing. By developing such practices, punk-feminist festivals allow new identities to exist regardless of these “rules of performativity” (Rudy, 2000). Moreover, the festivals also propose their attendees workshops dealing with non-binary identities, such as a workshop named “Gender(ed-)borders – a 245 theoretical and practical approach to the multiplicity of possible identities” . 244 “To build a space” in German. Its description says that the workshop is divided in two parts: the first one will address various theories about gender, gender identity and gender expression. 245 Unless specified, all translations are mine. 494

The second, which I’m particularly interested in here, “will consist in ‘trying’ new identities following the real meaning of the term (…) it will deal with (…) testing genderbending, genderqueer, no gender, etc.” That will be possible, according to the organizers, through the use of various accessories that will make the participants to perform other gender identities. On the stage, the attendees might also see bands, whose members perform femininity (as queer theorists say) but make music under male names. This is for example the case of Jason & Theodor, a dream pop band, formed by two women. In fact, their band name is a word play with their real names: Jason is Sonja and Theodor is Dorothee. By playing with their names, they play with gender binary and performing under male names therefore contributes to blurring frontiers between masculinity and femininity because it disrupts the audience expectations. Eve K. Sedgwick (2003) links the affects of shame with identity: we feel ashamed for what we are (while, on the contrary, we feel guilty for what we do, connecting thus the affect of guilt with actions). She further argues that queerness and shame are strongly correlated in the sense that shame has a specific impact of the construction of a queer identity, and writes:

Yet many of the performative identity vernaculars that seem most recognizably ‘flushed’ (…) with shame consciousness and shame creativity do cluster intimately around lesbian and gay worldly spaces. To name only a few: butch abjection, femmitude, leather, pride, SM, drag, musicality, fisting, attitude, zines, histrionicism, asceticism, Snap! Culture, diva worship, florid religiosity; in a word, flaming. And activism. (Sedgwick, 2003, 63-64)

Surely punk-feminists festivals, as places where “new” identities, deconstructing gender binary, aim to be designed both on stage by creative acts and out of stage, in the common spaces of the event, as places where people can “try” new identities, defying thus their assignation to a specific gender, have to deal for these two reasons with “shame creativity” in Sedgwick sense, flaming and activism.

3.2. ‘Sex is nice’: sex-positivity and alternative sex education Another characteristic of queer movements, said Kathy Rudy, as aforementioned, is “sex positivity”. In fact, a lot of festivals propose various talks or workshops about pornography, BDSM, sextoys, etc. The Ladyfest Hamburg for example offered in 2014 a workshop called “Last uniporn” whose description said: “The answer to bad porn (aka mainstream porn) isn’t ‘no porn’ rather ‘good porn’. Let us emphasize and discuss pornography out of a (queer-)feminist perspective, develop the concept, and have visual experiences”. Rather than completely rejecting pornography on the basis that it produces a “bad”, “mainstream” porn that carries strongly wrong images of women, the festival seeks to develop forms of “good porn” based on what its audience would like it to become. This leads to the emphasis of a pornography production by and for queer people. The attendees to the workshop are likely to become both consumers and producers of a (queer-). 495 10.1 German punk feminist festivals’ gender politics and social space: between identity and anti-identity politics

Besides pornography, one must also note that one of the most popular workshops programed within the whole range of festivals I studied is about creating DIY sex toys. The attendees are taught how to create harnesses, floggers (connecting them also with the BDSM scene) or dildos out of scratch, using for example used bike parts. There, the DIY ethos of punk is adapted to sexual practices, in a complete sense of queer-feminist punk. Yet, sex positivity is not just about having sex or having a lot of sex. Rather it is mostly about having safe(r) and consented sex: two topics that are also addressed in punk-feminist festivals. The Ladyfest Berlin therefore displayed in 2006 a “Safer Sex Workshop” that was advertised as such: “Sex is astonishing. Infections aren’t. Pleasure alone or by two, three... (…) This workshop should display information about STIs and tips for free medication”. The aim is to offer to the participants an “open-minded” and alternative sex education that takes into account non-heterosexual and non-conventional relationships. Once again, the notion of “pleasure” is central to the description and therefore, to the idea of sex and sexual relation carried through the event, no matter the type of the sexual encounter. Rather than judging the audience for their potential practices, the organizers of the workshop also emphasize the importance of being well informed of what sould be considered as safe and unsafe. Risk (of STIs, especially) isn’t hidden but it is contextualized in an open-minded atmosphere, free of LGBTQ-phobia and of what feminists call “slutshaming”. As I explained in a previous publication (Barrière, 2018), punk-feminism thereby leads to a slide from a paradigm of sex education based on risk and fear to one drawing on pleasure and prevention, allowing in the same time the development of queer body techniques. In Undoing Gender, Butler wrote:

Try to imagine a world in which those who live at some distance from gender norms, who live in the confusion of gender norms, might still understand themselves not only as living livable lives, but as deserving a certain kind of recognition (2004, p. 207).

Maybe, punk-feminist festivals are, if not a world246 at least a network of different spaces, where this happens to be possible. The activists I met are also aware that non-binary identities are not recognized by the society, in their everyday lives. While creating spaces for these identities to exist and therefore allow people to embody them, punk-feminist collectives do not neglect to fight against the oppression of women, mostly because some of them might be seen as such, out of the festival space.

4. Subcultural materialism and identity politics According to the French materialist feminist Colette Guillaumin (1995), men, as a class, benefit from their position in a hierarchy induced by gender as a social power system. Women, as a class, are thus kept in the dominated position through different means, among which work market and economy (women statistically earn less money than men), space dynamics (women statistically are confined in smaller spaces), physical, verbal, psychological and 246 They might nonetheless be sexual abuses (for example rape, street or , etc.). In this part, considered as such in the sense of Howard Becker’s Art Worlds (1982). 496

I aim to consider the impact of the aforementioned gendered social system in the realm of the punk scene.

4.1. Subcultural work, subcultural capital and the politics of space within the punk scene First, when it comes to work, there is nothing about earning money in the underground punk scene from which punk-feminist movements stem from. Speaking of gender roles inside of the scene, it is thus rather about earning visibility and recognition, which serves as a parallel of salary in the work market. Developed by Sarah Thornton (1995), the concept of “subcultural capital” could, in that case, be considered as an equivalent to the (economic) capital mentioned by Guillaumin. Straw summarizes it as what “brings together the interpretive skills and hip credibility which people acquire through their involvement in particular subcultures” (2004, p. 414). Jensen later develops “Following Thornton, I use the term subcultural capital (...) to refer to characteristics, styles, knowledge and forms practice that are rewarded with recognition, admiration, status or prestige within a subculture” (2006, p. 263). He, furthermore, advocates for a better accountability of gender and race issues within the study of subcultural capital dynamics, that had merely been associated with class. Therefore, following Jensen’s work, this article particularly aims to look at the gendered repartition of subcultural capital and at punk-feminist festivals as a counter-power. Sara Cohen (1997) also already analyzed a similar phenomenon, while investigating on the indie music scene in Liverpool. She noticed that the networks where technical knowledge was shared were exclusively masculine, and women strongly marginalized. Griffin (2012) states the same after years of autoethnography in the hardcore scene. Those results actually seem not to vary very much from genre to genre within DIY music scenes. And, unsurprisingly, the statement drawn by the Ladyfest Darmstadt organizing-team, in their manifesto is in fact pretty similar to Cohen’s and Griffin’s analysis. They write:

When it comes to organizing cultural events, women*247 often cook, build decorations or take care of finances and budgets while men* are standing on stage, booking bands or taking care of sound and lights, etc. Thus, we reclaim our right to occupy these key positions too.

247 In German queer-feminist When women in subcultural scenes claims they are denied their technical networks, the small stars (sternchen) knowledge and assigned to services roles (reception, catering, finances), as are used to expand gender beyond this abstract mentions it, they are warning us that they are cut from any its usual binary, following the possibility to acquire a subcultural capital as consequent as men’s. Plus they gender dynamics developed in the previous part of this article. But, are also less likely to express publicly their music tastes, as their positions aren’t while it designates a broader range in fact directly connected to music practices, contrary to men who are in place of people, it is the word “women” to share their tastes through their booking or creative choices. Women are that is to be representational and therefore also less likely to acquire the capital that goes along with having embodied hereby, following the “good tastes”, that is: having tastes recognized by the community of their aforementioned identity politics subculture. While being cut from the most visible and valuable functions in and materialist theories. In that case, it might designate women a subcultural scene, they are also cut from any possibility to develop a “hip and people read as women (re- credibility”. Taking part to a punk-feminist festival and “[ their] right gardless the gender they claim). 497 10.1 German punk feminist festivals’ gender politics and social space: between identity and anti-identity politics

to occupy (…) key positions” in the scene, they also aim to strive for the same possibility to develop a subcultural capital as men. The issue of space that followed economic capital in Guillaumin’s approach can actually, in that case, be analyzed in a really close way. Addressing the question of the space in the punk gig, follows the line of the Riot Grrrl movement who used to criticize the space taken by men in audiences, through the slogan “ to the front”. Furthermore, accordingly to the archives quoted, we can easily notice that by being much more on stage, men nonetheless acquire more subcultural capital and “hip credibility” but they also simply do occupy a broader space within the scene. This problem has also already been analyzed by scholar works (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012; Griffin, 2012; Sharp & Nilan, 2015). While addressing this problem, punk-feminist festivals goal is also to reclaim more space for women and queer punks. It was in fact the case of the first Olympia Ladyfest, and it still is, according for example to the Ladyfest Stuttgart- Esslingen manifesto: “The Ladyfest Stuttgart-Esslingen aims to open up new possibilities for women to show and develop their political, artistical and organizational skills, in order to encourage them to become self-confident in their personal and social environment”. In fact, if we consider the punk scene as a margin-center organization, punk-feminists argue that the center is mostly occupied by men, while women rather stand at the margins. This scheme is specifically illustrated by the crowd repartition in the venue, as analyzed by Dunn & Farnsworth (2012) who note that women usually stand at the back of the room, away from the pit. Organizing festivals where they can learn and share new skills should lead them to potentially acquire more “hip credibility” and therefore a subcultural capital. Not only should they now know how to take good care of budgets and catering, they also aim to embody the “key positions” of the musician or the local promoter. While drawing on analysis that remind us materialist feminist concerns, punk-feminist collectives do not only settle for an analyze of the punk scene gender dynamics, but they also seek for ways to counter them.

4.2. Punk-feminism going global: Against sexual, physical and emotional abuses Furthermore, punk-feminists do not only strike against gendered scene dynamics, they also lay their claims at the scale of the global society. Their stand against abuses (sexual, physical, verbal, and psychological) follows that dynamics, considering that these encounters might not only occur within the scene but also in the casual women’s life. Punk-feminist festivals offer a lot of workshops that address issues such as street harassment (Ladyfest Heidelberg 2014), rape culture (Ladyfest Berlin 2012, Ladyfest Heidelberg 2014), pick up artists (Ladyfest Mannheim 2016), etc. in order to warn women about these structures but also to find ways, strategies to resist them. They, once again, follow the legacy of self-help groups of the feminist second wave. According to Dackweiler and Schäfer (1999), feminist self-defense methods and groups came to Europe in 1976, when the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women happened in Brussels, gathering at the same time American and European feminist activists. These practices remain nowadays very popular in punk-feminist festivals: more than 40% of the events of my corpus organized a self-defense workshop. The question is also addressed by bands, such as KALK (a punk-hardcore band that 498

played at Ladyfest Saarbrücken in 2018) and their song “Шлюха из Бутово”. Bands also connect abuses to other feminist issues: in this case, the band Anti-Corpos, based between Sao Paulo, Brazil and Berlin, who played Ladyfest Berlin and Noc Walpurgii, uses the fictional but realistic story of a woman (who happens to also be a worker and a single ) to dispute the questions of being a poor woman and surviving from rape and assault:

Work work work work She’s been through hell, she’s been raped, Had an abortion, been aggressed. Fight, fight with your claws and with fury! She’s exploited but will never lower her head! She works, fights, she’s a winner, a warrior The mother of three children, SINGLE MOTHER (Anti-Corpos, 2014).

There, the band denounce the economic exploitation (“she’s exploited”) aforementioned – an issue more likely to touch women through gender wage and responsibility gap – alongside with physical and sexual abuses (“she’s been raped (…) been aggressed”). Following the path taken by punk movements since the 1980s, through American hardcore punk and the second wave of British punk (Cogan, 2007), this song is a perfect example of radical political and musical engagement adapted to a more feminist background of activism, by featuring a single mother as main character of the narrative. While a similar situation would put anyone at the margins of society but also of the punk scene, Anti-Corpos made their character become a model of feminist empowerment. Beside the denunciation of living conditions that are far from decent, the song pushes to “fight” and “never lower [one’s] head”. That willingness of a feminist empowerment is also to be found in the whole foundations of punk-feminist festivals (Guerra et al., 2017).

5. Conclusion: Intertwining queer and materialist feminism As a conclusion we can state that German punk feminist festivals have found a way to reconcile two feminist epistemologies that are generally opposed and associated with two different generations of activists. Queer feminism is thus generally expected to mark a break with the materialist approach. But nonetheless do punk feminist festivals conciliate them theoretically, they also achieve to conciliate them practically: on the one hand through a wide programs of workshops that blend together both approaches, and on the other hand through their musical programs, with both artists singing about social hierarchy of gender as it makes women to be a socially and economically dominated class and artists who embody queer identities on stage. While working on feminist collectives in Göttingen, Germany, Emeline Fourment (2017) explains that while the opposition between materialist and queer perspectives is evident to the theorists of feminism in France, her fieldwork showed her that despite a generational gap it is possible to conciliate them. It is true that one type of feminist analyzes is generally more likely to be associated with one historical context (the materialist approach 499 10.1 German punk feminist festivals’ gender politics and social space: between identity and anti-identity politics

goes for example well along with the early 1970s and their movements against capitalism) and therefore a generation of activists. Yet, the term “generation” might be more appropriate than “waves” because it allows us better to think in terms of practices, methodologies and analyzes passing down from generation to generation. I nonetheless disagree with Fourment when she concludes that contemporary feminist movements in Germany develop an “adapted materialist feminism” that also takes into account queer issues. I think that the blending is rooted as deep in both materialist feminism and queer movements and I thus prefer the expression “queer materialism” proposed by Sophie Noyé (2014), that clearly reflects both of the influences. Further investigations on that topic could also have led us exploring the claim and treatment of “” or “intersectional feminism” within punk-feminist festivals. Intersectionality is a more third-wave-of-feminism kind of identity politics that not only takes into account gender issues but also class and race. Developed by Kimberley Crenshaw (1989), it recently appeared as a central notion of punk-feminist networks, despite these remaining particularly white and middle-class.

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